Seamus Blackley: "The industry itself is undefeatable"

"We work in the greatest industry out there," asserts Blackley

Right now, the traditional gaming industry is being disrupted on all fronts by social games, free-to-play browser games and mobile games. However, Innovative Leisure founder Seamus Blackley has seen it all before, and to him games are the most important part.

"I remember the birth of 3D PC games and the rise of the NES and PC and PlayStation," said Blackley. "There was a point where a recruiter said to me 'Anyone without skills to work on PlayStation isn't going to have a job.' There have been lots of twists and turns, and what it teaches us is the industry itself is undefeatable, and there was the late '90s when all the marketers left for the Internet and they came back for things like MMOs when that market was peaking."

"The key takeaways are that great games continue to be great and that we work in the greatest industry out there," he added. "The business models that work are the ones that let people play the game they want. How to play Half Life 2? Get Steam. Want to play Halo? Get an Xbox. Want to play Angry Birds? Get an iPhone. We now see that great devices get great games. Rather than people being put down by this, it's extremely exciting."

Blackley had been representing Tim Schafer among others as an agent at Creative Artists Agency, and on the Double Fine developer he said, "Schafer is a prince among men. Everything you imagine he's like as fan, he's actually that way. Something I'm not sure many people know - I became ordained to officiate Tim Schafer's wedding."

Read more interesting tidbits from Blackley and find out the origin story of Innovative Leisure in the full interview on [a]list

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